Whole new natural world there for the asking

For the past three years, we have lived with a makeshift kitchen. For at least one of those three years I have gone to sleep each night thinking about how to redesign it and woken up realising that whatever I've dreamed up overnight isn't going to work.
So it's always amazed me that the majority of our friends, relations and neighbours know exactly how it should be redesigned, what materials should be used, what colour it should be and how much of our money should be spent, and have offered that advice freely and repeatedly despite a generally frosty reception.
I'm not very good with advice. I can't imagine why anyone would presume to know whether I can live without a rangehood and if I will quickly tire of an apple-green bench.
But recently I have had to concede that nurserymen and women, in particular, know far more than I do and listening to their advice can mean the difference between success and failure in the garden. So if, like me, you're inclined to bolt into the nursery, uplift the plants you want and bolt out again, try asking for, and taking, advice.
We have a stream at home and the banks have been recently denuded of the tobacco weed, ginger and gorse that have been holding them up.
On the nights when I haven't gone to sleep redesigning the kitchen, I've been redesigning the banks - with about the same rate of success. But today's visit to the garden centre to buy something else entirely yielded a splendid planting plan.
It wasn't me who sought advice, of course. My partner buttonholed the nurserywoman and asked what she thought. She thought manuka.
"Don't like them," I muttered. "They're dark and spindly and go leggy at the top and woody at the bottom. They get dead bits everywhere. I don't like the colours ..."
The nurserywoman pointed out two versions of a mid-green, larger-leafed, pink-flowered variety - one to grow straight, and the other to cascade down the bank.
Plant the tall ones at the back and the cascading version in front of them, she advised. Trim them little and often so they don't get leggy and thin. Make sure they have plenty of light and they'll stay reasonably dense. And in a couple of years they'll look like those ones over there.
"Those ones over there" were thick, lush, well-shaped and colourful. They were covered in flowers. Pink. My favourite. So now I'm excited about manuka. And about how much knowledge there is out there about what to grow and how to get the best from it.
Certainly there is plenty of information available about gardening in books, magazines and on the internet. But those sources don't answer you back when you growl that you don't like coprosma and grasses are passe and there's no place for chrome yellow in your garden. They don't take your hand and lead you to something you've never considered but that could, in fact, be perfect for your needs if only you'd shut up and listen for a minute.
So we have come home with a carload of Leptospermum scoparium var keatlyii (upright) and Leptospermum pink cascade (prostrate), and the bank will be sorted by this time next week.
The kitchen is sorted, too, thanks to the advice of the young designer at the local hardware depot, who made short work of the lack of space and managed to fit in both a rangehood and a dishwasher and talked me out of apple-green and into stone.
Perhaps I'll go to sleep tonight thinking about clothes, for a change.